The Nation council has postponed making its decision on changes to the electoral boundary setup for the municipality. The original plan called for council approving one of two options during its August 10 session. Instead council has rescheduled the final decision until September 28 to allow local residents more time to review the two options and provide comments and criticisms and also express their preference.

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Nouvelles délimitations de quartiers: décision reportée

Two choices

The Nation council received a report on the electoral boundaries situation in June from Watson & Associates Economists LTD and listened to a presentation on the report July 13 from two of the consultants who worked on it.

The municipality has seen almost a 30 per cent increase in its overall population during the past several years but not all of the existing four wards have seen the same amount of population change within their boundaries. That can result in unequal representation at the council table for residents of the community.

The consultant report reviewed the present electoral ward setup for The Nation and proposed two options for future changes. One option is to maintain the four-ward system but adjust the boundaries to try and provide more equal representation of residents at council.

The second option is to create a six-ward setup to provide better representation of residents at council. That option means redrawing all of the ward boundaries, which would result in reducing the size of the existing wards to allow for creation of the two new wards.

The report is available on the municipal website at https://nationmun.ca/en/our-council-staff/ward-boundaries/ and residents encouraged to read it and send their comments to council as part of the review process.

When the final option is approved, council will vote on a bylaw to set the electoral boundary changes in advance of the next municipal election. The bylaw may be subject to appeal to the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal.